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Let’s talk about repetition and learning.
Intel did it.
And then they did it over and over and over again.
They tacked a few seconds on the end of almost every major computer company’s TV ads with a directive to buy a computer with “Intel Inside.”
We all saw the ad and heard the catchy tune hundreds of times.
Maybe we had some idea that Intel made microprocessors, but we didn’t really know what an Intel was or what it did. And we certainly didn’t know why we needed one. But we did accept the message that we had to have a computer with an “Intel Inside.”
Why? Because Intel understood repetition and learning and repeated their motto over and over and over.
One of the most important – and often overlooked or maligned – aspects of marketing is the connection between repetition and learning. Neuroscientists have made significant advances in understanding the neurophysiological basis of learning and conclusively proven that repetition is crucial to learning and acceptance.
Studies show that our brains search for confirmation that a fact, statement, or activity is relevant. Things that appear repeatedly fall into this category and our brain recognizes and establishes them as important through three things: urgency, repetition, and association.
In medicine repetition and learning is called “The Neuroscience of Repetition.”
In marketing it’s known as “Lather, Rinse, Repeat.”
Repetition and Learning
Look around and you can see this happening:
Know someone with a political opinion you don’t understand or agree with and that you find so absurd you can’t understand how they can believe it? Just take a few minutes to look at the echo chamber they get their information from. You’ll see how they are constantly bombarded with the same message over and over and over until they can’t not believe it.
Wonder how abhorrent messages and opinions get spread so easily on social media? Learn just a bit about the algorithms that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et al, use to repeatedly home in on a user’s interest and you’ll see how fast their feeds become filled with the same, incessant messages.
Want to know more about how religious zealots become so focused on their one true path? Notice the number of rites, rituals, and practices they repeat over and over, and you’ll quickly see how this indoctrination occurs.
It’s no different for musicians, marathoners, or mathletes. Constant, consistent practice and repetition builds the physical aptitude and neural strength needed to get better at their chosen activities.
All groups that want to focus their members on a specific activity or outcome – from military to sports teams to activists to cults – understand repetition and learning. And they use constant repetition to hammer their message home and ingrain it in their followers’ lives.
Building your brand is no different. If your audiences can describe who you are, what you do, and what you do for them in just a few words, then they’ll think of you when they want what you’re offering. To get them to do that requires that you understand the link between repetition and learning.
Repetition and Learning
Volvo equals safety. Amazon equals convenience. Hawaii equals tropical relaxation. Paris equals romance.
We know these things because these brands have told us over and over and over again.
As you know, I’ve built my brand around branding. I help corporations, destinations, organizations, and individuals get clarity around what’s next and how to communicate. It’s worked so well for me that for two years running, the Global Gurus organization has included me in their list of top 30 Branding Gurus worldwide. I’ve been nominated again this year and would appreciate your support. If you’d like to help me, just click HERE and vote.
Because I know the power of repetition and learning, I’ll use the designation to continue to repeat my message of helping my clients through branding. And my speaking agent will use it to help remind meeting planners and event organizers to put me on their stages so I can help their audiences build their brands and improve their businesses and their lives.
And yes, once we secure the designation again, we’ll use it over and over and over. After all, practice does make perfect.
I do have a thought for you. My experience these days is that people often suffer from a remarkable lack of self-awareness. Perhaps the relentless repetition you describe accounts for some of that, when people become fully convinced of the rightness of their beliefs, they lose sight of how close-minded they become, and they lose a sense of the humanity of the people they are learning to despise. Isn’t that how the Nazi’s and other totalitarian ideologies operated? It scares me, once we consign people to a category and practice hating them, we all know what comes next.
When you use the example in this letter of knowing someone whose political opinions you don’t understand, perhaps it makes sense to also suggest that you look to yourself as well, maybe you have been indoctrinated, maybe the other guy is not wrong, evil, or whatever? Maybe we shouldn’t be all that sure of our opinions and beliefs, allow room for other views? Not assume “those evil idiots are indoctrinated, and I am good and 100% correct.”
Might lower the temperature a bit.
Hope to see you soon. Keep up the good work!
Roger
Voted!
Thank you Jim!!